This invention relates to an apparatus for recording information bearing a prescribed pattern on a film by a light signal.
Hitherto, impression of a patient's identification mark on a film in X-ray photography has been carried out by one of the following two processes. The first process consists in fixing by adhesive tape a metal piece representing a character or notation and consisting of an X-ray shielding material, for example, lead to part of a cassette previously attached to a separate X-ray film and printing said character or notation on the film by obstruction of X-rays when the affected part of a patient is photographed by X-rays. The second process is to write information or a patient's identification mark on a piece of paper by pencil, inserting said paper into part of a cassette, emitting a different form of light from X-rays on said information and printing the illuminated information on the X-ray film.
In each practical X-ray photography, characters or notations identifying a patient are, as a rule, manually changed from one patient to another. Therefore, this operation is not only time-consuming but also inefficient. Since a large number of films received in a magazine particularly for use with a recent X-ray apparatus for medical treatment have to be attached one by one to a repeatedly used cassette for each time of X-ray photography, impression of a patient's identification mark on the X-ray film by any of the above-mentioned processes is indeed troublesome.